Notes
lists.village.virginia.edu The J18 mobilization sought to link up the autonomous struggles of “environmentalists, workers, the unemployed, indigenous peoples, trade unionists, peasant groups, women’s networks, the landless, students, peace activists and many more”. See bak.spc.org In political discourse in the UK, ‘workerism’ is usually a derogatory term for approaches we disagree with for fetishizing the significance of workplace struggles (and dismissing those outside the workplace). Italian operaismo, on the other hand, refers to the inversion of perspective from that of the operation of capital to that of the working class: “We too have worked with a concept that puts capitalist development first, and workers second. This is a mistake. And now we have to turn the problem on its head, reverse the polarity, and start from the beginning: and the beginning is the class strugg... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Conclusion : A Bad String Makes a Bad Necklace
Conclusion: a bad string makes a bad necklace New old categories for the ‘new’ era In the course of this article we have addressed the inadequacy of Negri and Hardt’s concepts of material and immaterial labor for the understanding of capitalism and its contradictions — the string of their fascinating necklace. Negri and Hardt’s categories of material and immaterial labor replace the old categories of manual and mental labor of traditional Marxist times. The latter were intended to conceptualize the ‘manual’ as a potentially revolutionary agent of class struggle. It is important to notice that the essential distinction between those who create and those who execute within production — thus a distinction in roles and privileges — became conflated with ‘mental’ and ‘manual’ work, i.e. the type of work done. The increasing investment of capi... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 5 : Immaterial labour and the heart of capital
5. Immaterial labor and the heart of capital We have focused so far on immaterial production as the production of knowledge and ideas. Another, central, aspect of immaterial production as defined by Negri and Hardt is the production of affects, communication and cooperation. In this section we address Negri and Hardt’s view that this production, which is capitalist production, is ‘elevated to the level of human relations’ and criticize their inability to understand the ontological inversion that turns affects and communication into abstract powers of capital and into our disempowerment. 5.1. ‘Immaterial production of communication and affects and subversion Capital and affects, it seems, do not go along too well. For Negri and Hardt capital was simply forced to incorporate affects and other subjective powers like communication and cooperation into production (Empire, pp. 275–6). Without the strug... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 4 : Immaterial labour and the mind of capital
4. Immaterial labor and the mind of capital We now consider the subjective side of immaterial production i.e. how immaterial production is related to class antagonism and the necessity of the revolution. Negri and Hardt say that antagonism emerges from our resistance against capital’s efforts to tamper with our potentially autonomous deployment of creativity and to enclose what we produce in common. To this view we oppose that antagonism arises from the unacceptability of a division of labor that imposes our daily deprivation of creativity, and we explain why immaterial production is part of it. 4.1 The contradictions of immaterial production as the contradictions of capital Negri and Hardt’s theory has the interesting aspect of speaking about subjectivity. Against bourgeois objectivism it tells us that the development of capital and its contradictions are the result of antagonism, of subjectivity. As we have seen in Section 1,... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 3, Chapter 3 : Immaterial labour and capital as objectification
3. Immaterial labor and capital as objectification In this section we comment on Negri and Hardt’s thesis that immaterial production is ripe for self-management since this ‘new’ production is inherently independent from the individual capitalist. We argue that the apparent objectivity and autonomy of immaterial labor from the capitalist is only evidence that immaterial production is an aspect of capital. We argue that Negri and Hardt’s uncritical naturalization of the present production system derives from their lack of understanding of capital as an objectified social relation. We will see that this problem is mirrored by a parallel, opposite one: Negri and Hardt’s lack of critical understanding (and celebration) of capital as the product of bourgeois subjectivity. 3.1. Production as inherent in the practices of labor Negri and Hardt tell us that there is something interestingly new in immaterial production t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Consequences of the undialectical conception of capital as ‘just imposition of work’
4. Consequences of the undialectical conception of capital as ‘just imposition of work’ We have seen that the Autonomist understanding of capital as ‘imposition of work’ stresses only one aspect of capital, that of discipline, organization, despotism. This means that the other aspect of capital, the freedom to exchange and own your own value in the sphere of circulation is not spelled out. This undialectic approach allows for two possible theoretical understandings. One, clearly followed by Cleaver and De Angelis, is that of incorporating the latter aspect of capital in the first, even if they are opposite. In order to force two opposite dialectic aspects into one ‘imposition of work’, the concepts that d... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The quest for value
1. The quest for value No Marxist would deny that housework and reproductive work are functional and necessary for the whole process of capital’s self-valorization. What makes Fortunati’s book new or challenging is that it aims to convince the reader that housework is a real expenditure of abstract labor time, and a real creator of value, and that this can be quantified. In fact, the argument that work done outside production is productive is a recurrent focus in Autonomist theory. In Reading Capital Politically, Cleaver reminded the reader that abstract labor and abstract labor time ‘must be grasped in the totality of capital’ (p. 118) and that in the ‘total social mass’ of abstract labor and value produ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Grasping retreat
4. Grasping retreat Tronti famously argued that each successful capitalist attack upon labor only displaces class antagonism to a higher, more socialized level (Wright, p. 37). Following this, Negri, Cleaver and others in and influenced by the autonomia current stress the role of working class struggle in driving capital forward. Working class activity is seen not (just) as a response to the initiatives of capital but as the very motor of capitalist development — the prime mover. In this account, capitalist crisis — the shutting down of industries, mass unemployment and austerity — means that working class struggle simply changes form rather than retreats. Class struggle is argued to be ubiquitous and manifold in form. Thi... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Conclusions As we said in the Introduction, the present critique of The Arcane of Reproduction was principally aimed at commenting on a few questions that have been central in the Autonomist tradition: Does reproductive work (and in general any work outside the sphere of production) create value? Is the whole society a large factory where any work or activity not only produce value but are also organized as waged work? Can we see class relation in capitalism as the antagonism between capital, i.e. a subject that merely wants to impose (work) discipline, and the working class? In Section 1 we explored the reasons behind the Autonomist argument that work outside the sphere of production creates value. We showed that this ‘quest’ f... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The origin of immaterial labour as class struggle
2. The origin of immaterial labor as class struggle In this section we comment on one of the central issues in Negri and Hardt, that immaterial production is itself the result of the struggles of the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the class experimented with ‘new productivity’, and autonomously redefined itself as creative, flexible, communicative labor power. We agree that the emergence of what Negri and Hardt call immaterial production should be analyzed as class struggle, but we argue that immaterial production is an aspect of the domination of capital over labor, though contradictory and unstable. We then question Negri and Hardt’s vision of immaterial production as having inherent anti-capitalist aspects in itself an... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)